The Freudian Slip

Sigmund Freud believed that a speech error (or slip of the tongue) is a moment when we reveal our suppressed or subconscious desires/feelings. Named after Freud himself "The Freudian Slip" delivers "unconscious content, too threatening to be confronted directly." But as is the case with many of Freud’s works this one also turned out to be a fallacy, apparently such quirks are a part and parcel of a human brain.

Another one of Freud's infamous theories is the “Oedipus Complex” which also got debunked ages ago. “Oedipus Complex” refers to a child’s feelings of desire (of sexual nature) towards his mother while jealousy towards the father. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica Freud came up with this theory while working with a small group of children where the focal point of this odd study was a 4 years old boy known as “Little Hans.” Since Freud’s sample size was so minuscule, it had a margin for error (to say the least) and over time, it did prove to be a flawed theory.

"The Penis Envy" is another "Freud masterpiece" where Freud theorized that during the sexual development years, young girls, experience anxiety upon realizing that they don’t have a penis. Fortunately, this theory is not only debunked but discarded by those working in the field of mental health.

Freud had a bag-full of mad assertions on the mechanics of the human brain and yet he still haunts our pop-culture with impunity 2nd to none, even in a 3rd world country such as ours.

Recently, at a social gathering (maintaining Covid-19 SOPs of-course) someone mentioned Freud, his practice of "psychoanalysis" and how it can transcend into various fields of society.

Only it can not be! let's dissect "psychoanalysis" and to do that we must start with the mothership, "Psychology" which has problems of its own. Psychology is still not considered a proper scientific discipline (Don't believe me? type in "psychology vs science" hit enter and feast your eyes upon the many reading materials on this subject) and the reason is that unlike Chemistry, Physics, or Biology; Psychology was a branch of Philosophy till the mid-1800s.

And since philosophers are not very big on collecting data and conducting experiments this became very problematic as it is fundamental to science to perform experiments, repeatedly, to accumulate as much accurate data as possible, and then apply that data to develop a technology that will serve in the advancement of our species.

Dear reader, can you name such an achievement by psychology in recent years?

Another hurdle in data accumulation in psychology is the small sample size; in 2008 a study was conducted by an American professor of Psychology where He presented this problem in numbers:-

*96% of people, taking part in all psychological studies, are westerners, and they are only 12% of the world population.

*Out of that bunch 68% are American, which is only 5% of the world population.

*And finally; 77% of people in that small group are white.

You don’t need a degree in science to see the problem with that method and its results. This kind of practice becomes more dubious when you are talking about a theory, came into being in the 1800s.

In 1896 Freud presented the term psychoanalysis, treatment of mental health disorders, it became popular therapy for the better part of the 1900s. Psychoanalysis is a talk therapy where the subject talk in great lengths to the therapist, during many sessions, and at the end of his/her treatment can feel cured after emptying that subconscious baggage in a cathartic manner.

There are only 1,000 problems with such therapy;

*what if the subject has schizophrenia?

*What if the subject has multiple personality disorder?

*Or the subject tends to develop false memories?

If a layman such as myself can think of such scenarios; one can only imagine the onslaught of modern academia and clinical studies this monstrosity has to face on the regular basis and is rightfully dying out.

So why in a 3rd world country, such as ours, people still talk about Freud in high esteem? Maybe the ‘Freudian Slip’ is true in our case, our eternal hunger for mythological figures and fairy tales is so deep-rooted that instead of being a skeptic of pseudoscience we tend to flare it with pride.